VMware is announcing discontinuation of its third party virtual switch (vSwitch) program, and plans to deprecate the VMware vSphere APIs used by third party switches in the release following vSphere 6.5 Update 1. Subsequent vSphere versions will have the third party vSwitch APIs completely removed and third party vSwitches will no longer work.

This has no impact on existing use of third party vSwitch on supported vSphere release. It also has no impact on support already purchased from VMware or the support lifecycle for the product. For more information on the end of support for this product, see the VMware Lifecycle Product Matrix.

The third party switch APIs will work and be supported up to vSphere 6.5 Update 1.

To assist in vSwitch migration, VMware offers a free migration tool for migrating from Nexus 1000v to VDS. In addition, VMware’s Professional Services Organization can provide services to customer to migrate from third party vSwitch to VDS.”

Virtual Networking is one of the Key components of Datacenter. If all your Critical VMs running on highly redundant & high speed SAN or Ethernet Network but if VMs can’t communicate with each other then everything is useless.
From Functioning perspective, Virtual Network in VMware is similar to Physical Networks. Like Physical networking, Virtual networking is also exercises TCP/IP stack so nothing is changed underneath.
But Virtual networking has introduced many new components or its complex terminology which is sufficient enough to confuse any new admin or anyone who is trying to familiar with VMware Networking.

In this post, I will try to make you guys familiar with VMware Networking components, Its terminology and significance of each Networking Component.”